This blog is a place for me to post my homilies and other assorted things

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Merry Christmas

Christmas 2012:

First of
all, let me say on behalf of Monsignor Mike and everyone at St. Matthews: Merry
Christmas to all of you. We celebrate
this feast with great joy. Christ is
born for us. God our Father sent his
only begotten Son into the world to bring us healing and peace, forgiveness and
reconciliation, he came as our Savior to bring us everlasting life. Today we celebrate his birth, we see in this
little child the hope of the whole human race.
Without him, without this little baby, we are lost, doomed to death as
punishment for our transgressions, but with Christ, with this baby, there is
hope, salvation. No wonder we are filled
with joy today.

There is a lot to love about
Christmas. I love everything about
Christmas: presents, parties, lots of food, family, fun, etc. But at the heart of everything we do during
this Christmas season is this little baby.
There are many clichés that capture this sentiment, but there is
something to these phrases: keep Christ in Christmas, he is the reason for the
season, etc. Without Christ there would
be no Christmas, without Christ we would not be here, without Christ there
would be no Christianity, no Church, no Mass, no salvation, no parties,
presents, or chocolate. So during
Christmas it is important to remember this little Child, it is good for us to
contemplate who he is.

This week as I was contemplating
Christmas and contemplating this little baby I thought about Star Wars. Now, this might seem a bit strange. You might think I had visions of baby Jesus with a light sabre doing battle with the forces of evil. But, no, I was thinking about the opening titles. At the beginning of every Star Wars movie
is the same phrase: a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away: Star Wars. This is George Lucas’ way of saying that this
story is fiction, it is not pretending to be real life. If anything, Star Wars is a myth about good
overcoming evil.

Is this how we think about the
birth of Jesus? It is certainly true
that it happened a long time ago, over 2000 years ago; and, it is certainly
true that it was far, far away, in a little town called Bethlehem. There are certainly mythical elements
involved: we hear about angels talking to people, about Jesus being a divine
figure.

But, this story is no myth, this
story is not fiction. This story is
real, Jesus was really born, he really had a mother, he lived in a real time
and place. And as Pope Benedict wrote
recently, this flies in the face of the modern spirit. In our day and age, God is relegated to the
realm of ideas and principles. It is
completely acceptable for someone to be spiritual, or to believe in God, just
so long as we don’t allow God to affect our real life. God is certainly allowed to act in the
spiritual realm, but not in the material realm, that is the realm of science
and physics. God is allowed to exist in
the spiritual, ethereal plane, but not in the material, concrete world. But, if God cannot act in the material world,
then he is not God, for to be God means to be the maker and sustainer of
everything.

When we say that this little baby
is the Son of God, who become man, we are saying something amazing. We are saying that God not only made the
universe and set it in motion, but that he entered the world he created. We are saying that God not only created the
human race, but that he became human in order to share his divine life with
us. When we say that this little baby is
God we are saying that God is real, that he exists in the real world, that he
is tangible and concrete. The birth of
Christ is not some mere myth or morality story.

So, my friends, we celebrate this
feast of Christmas with great joy. We
celebrate the fact that Jesus is really God.
That while this story is set a long time ago in a city far, far away,
this really happened. Jesus is God, he
was sent to be our savior. And just as
Jesus came into the real, concrete world 2000 years ago, he continues to come
into the reality of our lives. We live
every day in the presence of God, he is not remote, he is not distant. He loves us, cares for us and is present in
our lives. In a sense, every day could
be filled with the joy of Christmas because every day can be a day where we
experience God’s presence in our lives.

We experience this presence in a
very powerful way right here as we celebrate this holy Mass. That little baby is truly God, and his is present
in the Holy Eucharist. Right here at
this mass Christ comes to us, not as a little baby, but as his body and
blood. Today we celebrate his birth among
us, and we welcome him into our lives as our savior and redeemer, but we do so
by welcoming him into our lives in this Holy Eucharist. Jesus Christ is real, he is not a myth, not a
morality fable, not something from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Today and every day of our lives we believe
in Jesus Christ, we love him, and we follow him.